I’ve just read an interesting paper published in late 2016 in Conservation Biology that had so far escaped my attention. But given my interest in African conservation recently (and some interesting research results on the determinants of environmental performance for that region should be coming soon out of our lab), the work caught my eye.

The paper by Bowker and colleagues asked a question that has been asked previously regarding the ‘effectiveness’ of protected areas — do they succeed in limiting forest loss? While forest loss itself is not necessarily indicative of biodiversity erosion in any given area (for that, you need measures of species trends, etc.), it is arguably one of the most important drivers of species loss today.

The first set out to differentiate ‘effective’ from ‘ineffective’ protected areas, which was a simple binary variable related to whether there was less deforestation inside the protected area relative to comparable points outside (effective), or greater than or equal to deforestation outside (ineffective). The authors then related this binary response to a series of biophysical and social indicators. Read the rest of this entry »

What makes some conservation endeavours successful where so many fail to protect biodiversity? Or, how long is a piece of string?

Yes, it’s a difficult question because it’s not just about the biology – such as resilience and area relationships – in fact, it’s probably more about the socio-economic setting that will ultimately dictate how the biodiversity in any particular area fares in response to disturbance.

In the case of protected areas (that I’ll just refer to as ‘reserves’ for the remainder of this post), there’s been a lot of work done about the things that make them ‘work’ (or not) in terms of biodiversity preservation. Yes, we can measure investment, how much the community supports and is involved with the reserve, how much emphasis is put on enforcement, the types of management done within (and outside) of the reserves, et cetera, et cetera. All of these things can (and have to some extent) been correlated with indices of the fate of the biodiversity within reserves, such as rates and patterns of deforestation, the amount of illegal hunting, and the survival probability of particular taxa.

But the problem with these indices is that there are just indices – they probably do not encapsulate the overall ‘health’ of the biodiversity within a reserve (be that trends in the overall abundance of organisms, the resilience of the community as a whole to future disturbances, or the combined phylogenetic diversity of the ecosystem). This is because there are few long-term monitoring programmes of sufficient taxonomic and temporal breadth to summarise these components of complex ecosystems (i.e., ecology is complex). It’s no real surprise, and even though we should put a lot more emphasis on targeted, efficient, long-term biodiversity monitoring inside and outside of all major biodiversity reserves, the cold, hard truth of it is that we’ll never manage to get the required systems in place. Humanity just doesn’t value it enough. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just come across an exceptionally important paper published recently in PLoS Biology by a team of venerable conservation biologists led by the eminent Andy Balmford of the University of Cambridge. My first response was ‘Holy shit’, and now that I contemplate the results further, I can now update that sentiment to ‘Holy shit!’.

Most people reading this blog wouldn’t bother questioning the importance of protected areas for the preservation of biodiversity – for them, it’s a given. While the effectiveness of protected areas globally is highly variable in that regard, there’s little contention among conservationists that we do not yet have enough of them to conserve biodiversity effectively, especially in the oceans that cover some 70% of the planet’s surface.

But that justification isn’t good enough for some people – perhaps even the majority. Even our own myopic, anti-environment political bungler Prime Minister has stated publicly that national parks just ‘lock up‘ areas to the exclusion of much more important things like jobs and income generation. He’s even stated that Australia has ‘too many‘ national parks already, and that timber workers are “the ultimate conservationists“. As I type those words, I can feel the bile accumulating in my throat. Read the rest of this entry »

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF STRONGER LAWS FOR CLIMATE-CHANGE MITIGATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IN AUSTRALIA

Australia has many trees, amphibians, and reptiles that are unique, being found nowhere else on Earth. Northern Australia contains a disproportionate amount of this biodiversity which occurs in little developed areas, parks and reserves, indigenous titled lands, and community-managed lands.

Whilst Australia’s achievements in protecting some of its remaining native forests, wildlife and wilderness are applauded, some 6 million hectares of forest have been lost since 2000. Existing forest protection will be undermined by weak climate change legislation, and poorly regulated agricultural and urban development.

“Australia has some of the world’s most desperately endangered ecosystems and species, which direly need better protection,” said Laurance. “Just 7.7 percent of the continent is in national parks—that’s low by international standards.”

“It really is worrying,” said Thomas Lovejoy, a renowned ecologist and former environmental advisor to three U.S. presidents. “I hope the Prime Minister gets better advice in the future because the world really needs Australia’s leadership on the environment.”

As an example, the scientists cite the mountain ash forests of Victoria, which have been devastated by over-logging and fires, with just 1.2% of the old-growth forest remaining.